


Camping, Running, and the Ambiguity In-between

by qanterqueen



Category: Fake AH crew - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Blood, FAHC, Fake AH Crew, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots, Injuries described, M/M, Raywood, Slow Burn, Vomit, im writing this like its 2016 because I genuinely just do not care anymore, it just is all sad and awful but it will probably end well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-12 04:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20156989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qanterqueen/pseuds/qanterqueen
Summary: “You keep saying ‘camping’ but it’s starting to feel more like we’re on the run.”Things go south. Very, very south.





	Camping, Running, and the Ambiguity In-between

**Author's Note:**

> Can you believe I’m writing and publishing FAHC Raywood in 2016? Can you believe this is probably gonna be multichaptered?  
My amazing and wonderfully talented friend (dancing-homestuck/socoolraywoodbloghere on tumblr) wrote some amazing stuff over on her Raywood blog (I’ll link it at the end notes. My laptop gave up on me writing this, which is why it’s being posted here and not on tumblr with a read more) and it made me realize that God Damnit, I Miss These Boys.  
I know the Fake AH Fandom has likely changed since the years moved on. I know adding ray in stuff is beating a dead horse.  
I don’t care. I want nostalgia and nostalgia I’m getting.  
I haven’t really written in months and my laptop is in the shitter and frankly I have long ass acrylic nails, so please excuse any exceptionally bad mistakes. I wish I could say I’ll fix them later.

“I know,” he keeps saying, over and over and over. “I know.”

Repetition keeps them grounded. It’s reassuring-- or, rather, it’s supposed to be. It’s the only reason Ryan keeps smiling and lying and it’s the only reason Ray keeps trying to believe him. Reassurance. 

Repetition. 

Reassurance that reinforces the need for repetition.

It’s a very simple script that keeps them placated: Ray sighs. Ryan says, with a tired smile, “just think about it like this-- like we’re camping or something”, and Ray says, “neither of us likes to camp”, and then Ryan keeps saying, over and over and over, “I know”. Ray doesn’t move. Ryan makes up an excuse to get away from the campsite. Firewood or drinking water or food or literally anything. 

Then he leaves. Ray can’t ever tell when he’ll be back. Sometimes it only takes a few minutes and he comes back with whatever he had promised to find. Sometimes he’s gone for hours, long after it starts to gets dark, and the moment Ray starts to think that he’s been abandoned for good, the trees rustle and Ryan comes back. Sometimes he’s empty handed, but those are the times that Ray can be certain that he knows where he’s gone-- those are the times Ray knows he’s just been walking. Arbitrarily picking directions to go in, whether he’s trying to find a way out for them or just trying to get himself lost. Somewhere along the way he probably forgets what lie he had told in the beginning and what he would have had to come back with to make it true. It used to bother Ray that he wasn’t invited on those outings. If Ryan _had_ found a way out, would he have come back for Ray? Or would he have just left? 

After a couple of times, when Ray was alone and the sun was gone and only the moon kept him company and drove away some paranoia, Ray had lost the thought that Ryan wouldn’t come back. He always did.

More and more, though, Ryan didn’t even leave at all. 

“I know,” Ryan would say, “I know.” Then he’d sit down next to Ray.

Which is almost like physical reassurance. It almost pushes the idea that they actually _are_ camping.

Maybe it’s the impending doom that presses around them, hiding in the shadows of the trees during the day, but Ryan’s been a lot… nicer? Touchy? Calm? There’s a certain feeling that draws the two of them closer. Ray feels it too-- he’s doing the same thing. Any time he has, he’s holding Ryan’s hand. He’s leaning on him. He’s doing whatever he can to be close. 

Ryan’s not one to initiate those little touches. In fact, he’s kinda really not one to do much. He doesn’t talk a lot, he doesn’t touch a lot, he doesn’t show a lot. But the first night in the woods, Ray’s heart almost stops as Ryan wordlessly slips his hand into Ray’s. He quickly covers his surprise by whispering, “Jeez, your hands are cold,” even though nobody asked. He did use that as an excuse to scoot closer, though. October was not a great season to get stranded in the deep woods, after all.

So that’s been nice, even if it borders on a “might as well have fun before we die” vibe. 

Might as well kiss the dude you’re in love with before you freeze to death in the woods.

Right?

It’s been harder and harder to handle his feelings around Ryan as the days move on. Staying in the woods, alone, was uncovering some things Ray has worked really hard to bury in the concrete jungle. It wasn’t really a secret anymore, but even through all the glances, hand-holding, and awkward “well it’s really cold and we only have one blanket” moments around the campfire, neither of them had ever actually _said _anything to each other. It wasn’t a secret that Ray had never shared things so intimate to anyone else before. It wasn’t a secret that Ryan didn’t smile at anyone else quite as much. But there was this weird unsaid barrier that the two of them had erected, maybe a year or so ago-- criminals like them weren’t supposed to really love someone else. Criminals like them were a different breed of people. Beings created so awkwardly that their hands could never really fit together like they were supposed to.

It was one specific night that really made this distinction.

Thinking back on it now, Ray really can’t remember the details. It was around the time that things had started becoming suspicious; the first few times that doors were found locked and people would leave without explanation. Something had gone wrong, which wasn’t shocking or suspicious in the Fake AH Crew, but this time was different. 

The two of them had been roughed up and had just enough energy to drag themselves to an abandoned construction site and up to the third floor. The place was supposed to be a mall, or something of the like. An open floor plan and a bunch of smaller rooms surrounding. Ryan had said something about all the graffiti on the wall making it more like an art gallery than a post-apocalyptic final-level stage. Ray hadn’t laughed. He was sporting a few broken ribs, but even if he wasn’t, he still wouldn’t have laughed.

They had all gotten split up. Neither Ray nor Ryan had any idea where anyone else was. They had tried calling everyone for hours. No response. No call back. Not even a smoke signal or a stray carrier pigeon.

The only response they had gotten was at midnight, almost on the dot, after they had settled into a tiny room with only a few windows to provide light. Ray’s phone buzzed inside his jacket, long since bloodstained and thrown to the floor in the corner. 

It was a text from an unknown number. 

“Hope you guys are okay. We’ll pick you up in the morning.”

Ray’s thumbs had hovered over the keyboard, trying to think of a response. Where was everyone else? Were they okay? Safe? Why couldn’t they be picked up _now_?

Ryan had gently taken the phone from him after a minute. “Don’t worry yourself about that,” he had said. “No need to respond.”

He had tossed the phone back over to the jacket. It missed and clattered on the floor, skidding a few feet away from its target. Neither of them bothered to retrieve it or check it for scratches or make sure it still worked. They had to trust the others to stick to their words and find them in the morning. There was really no other option.

Ryan’s motorcycle had crashed. Hard. He had tried to fake out the cop car and it worked, but he couldn’t pull away fast enough. He had just enough time to tilt the bike and skid it into a wall instead of having them both hit it head on. 

They had been bruised and bloody before then, but they could have made it out. But the accident had-- at least-- broken a few of Ray’s ribs and twisted his ankle. Ryan’s leg was scratched up and dripping blood, fast, and his arm was twisted at a wrong angle, hanging limply by his side. All they could do was drag themselves to the abandoned building and up those few flights of stairs, and even then the moment they had picked a room the two of them had all but collapsed on the floor, exhausted and in pain. No longer threatened by the chase of prison and death, neither of them had the energy to run, nonetheless move.

Ray had laid flat on the floor, every breath and movement painful against his ribs. Every slight turn of his ankle made him gasp, which just hurt the worst. He had tried to lean against Ryan the best he could on the way up but Ryan wasn’t in any shape to hold any weight, either. Ryan had almost fallen against the wall, his good arm pressing hard into the fabric on his leg. They were both pale, sweating, and gasping for breath-- they didn’t speak for a good half an hour, just trying to get their heartbeats to stop echoing in their head. 

When Ray finally felt like the small gasps he had taken had filled up his lungs enough, he spoke. “How are you holding up over there?” 

His eyes had long since closed. All he could see from his spot on the floor was the concrete ceiling anyway.

“Um,” Ryan had replied, a little too quiet. “Not… not great, Ray.”

_Great_, Ray thought. “Is your leg still…” He paused for a few long seconds, regaining air little by little. “Still bleeding?”

“Uh…” 

That was as good an answer as any. “Can you help me up?”

“Um… Yeah.”

Ray waited. Heard the rustle of fabric and a gasp, which was… quite frankly, a sound he’s never heard out of Ryan. “Rye? You good?”

There was more silence and then a lengthy exhale and a grunt. “No-- Ray, I--”

“No bigs. I’ll get myself up.”

The adrenaline from earlier in the night was starting to wear thin. Ray tried to brace and push himself up, but every shift sent a spike of pain in his chest that left him breathless. Sometimes the pain became so much that it traveled to his head, where the world around him would pulse and he’d have to stop, waiting for _that _pain to subside before his chest even thought about letting up on him. He might have told Ryan, at that point, that he thought he had a concussion. If he had said it out loud, Ryan hadn’t responded.

It took an ambiguous amount of time, but after a lot of effort and pauses and “_fuck_, _fuck_ _me_ _that_ _hurts_,” Ray was actually sitting up, even sweatier and more pale than before. He was a few feet away from the wall that Ryan was leaning against-- he could only move his neck and see the tip of Ryan’s shoes-- but there was absolutely no way he could have dragged himself to be next to him without help. 

“Rye? You up?”

“I--”

Then there was coughing-- _wet _ coughing-- and Ray discovered that when there’s a will, there’s a way.

Ryan did not stop coughing in the time that it took Ray to drag himself backwards and hit the wall that Ryan was against. Luckily he landed only about a foot away from him, and in the moonlight-- once his head stopped pounding and he managed to catch his breath and open his eyes-- Ray could finally see what was wrong. 

There was blood _everywhere_. On Ryan’s face, on his leg, on his jacket-- but more concerningly was the blood speckled in the crook of his elbow, where he was still coughing with his face screwed up in pain. Ray wasn’t one for being squeamish, but his stomach churned when he glanced down and saw a few shards of glass embedded in a tear in Ryan’s leg reflect the moon’s light. 

Ryan’s coughing eventually died down and he rested his head against the wall, his breathing raspy and quick. Blood quickly grew stale on his chin.

“How bad do you think it is?” Ray asked, not really wanting the answer.

Ryan took his good hand and rubbed his face. He looked as tired as Ray felt. “Not…” he cleared his throat. “Not great.”

“What can we do?”

They both glanced down. 

“That’s going to hurt,” Ray commented lightly, trying for humor.

“Like a bitch.”

Ryan wasn’t able to physically take off his belt to bite down on, and like hell if Ray was brave enough to do that for him, but in the end Ryan had reassured that he’d be fine without it. What kind of Vagabond would he be if he couldn’t handle some glass picking?

Quickly, though, Ray realized that after the day’s events, _he _would have liked a belt to bite down on. Unfortunately the task of removing the glass remained up to him, seeing as he was the only one with two functioning arms. 

It was awful.

Ryan remained quiet enough for the first two shards. Ray would move his fingers and Ryan would clench his jaw and tense up and exhale a puff of pained air. After the third piece, he was gasping again, and his breath was starting to rattle in his chest. Ray felt like he was going to be sick, and if he wasn’t so oddly aware of the hygiene in taking out glass with bare, dirty fingers, he would have thrown up already. There was so much blood, and he was already so tired and lightheaded, and with each piece more and more spilled onto the floor, dark and shiny and more than concerning.

The last piece, of course, was the worst. It was buried in his leg, but not deep or small enough to just leave. So Ray just had to go for it.

He gave no warning, and he probably should have, because the moment his finger hit Ryan’s flesh--

“_Ray_!” Ryan had _whined_, quick and pained and almost _panicked_, “Ray-- Ray, stop--”

And an arm had grasped at Ray’s, holding it in place firmly.

That was the first time Ray paused, finally looking at Ryan, shocked. Ryan’s breathing was erratic and flighty. He was _dripping_ in sweat.

It was the worst that Ray had ever seen him. Ray wasn’t even aware that Ryan was capable of _showing _that hurt. 

They stayed there, stone still, as Ryan squeezed his eyes closed and his grip on Ray’s arm eased but never left. Ray gave him a few moments before whispering softly, “It’s the last one.” 

Ryan nodded. Ray felt terrible, though whether it was out of pity or nausea he couldn’t tell. He had t-minus five minutes before everything he had eaten that day would empty from his stomach, and with his broken ribs he knew that it was going to completely put him out of commission. He could only hope and pray that after he threw up he’d have enough strength to roll himself over before he passed out so he wouldn’t choke in his sleep.

Perhaps it was the come down of the adrenaline of the day’s events. Or maybe the way that with every centimeter he moved, Ryan could feel hot lava bleed from the inside of his arm to the rest of his body-- or maybe the way that Ray’s world tilted more and more every time he blinked-- but when Ray reached out his hand, Ryan held it.

Ray squeezed with all the strength he had left. He hoped it was reassuring.

Ryan squeezed back. He hoped it was reassuring, too.

Ryan lost consciousness while Ray tried the best he could to dig out the shard quickly. He managed to take off his jacket and tuck it around Ryan’s leg snugly before he turned and vomited on the floor next to them. His ribs ached and screamed and begged him to stop but he couldn’t-- when everything finally subsided he felt as though ripping his own chest open and taking out the damn things altogether would hurt less. 

He envied Ryan, after all was said and done and the blood on his fingers dried and the vomit next to him stopped smelling as rancid. Unfortunately, he was in too much pain to fall asleep and not enough pain to pass out.

There was a very odd feeling that crept into his mind then. He was far too tired to look at it head-on, or to really give it a name, but it moved him to sit closer to Ryan. To, even though they were both exhausted and numb, grab Ryan’s hand again. To lean on his shoulder and close his eyes and wonder when he ever started feeling so lonely, and why _this_ made that loneliness subside.

It compelled him to not move away when he blinked and woke up to sunshine in his face and Ryan watching him with tired eyes.

“We made it through the night,” Ryan commented quietly.

Ray nodded against his shoulder. He was far too exhausted to do anything else.

Neither of them spoke until the sounds of doors and footsteps echoed through the building and they heard their names being called. Ryan tried to yell back, but the moment his mouth opened he was coughing again, splattering fresh blood all over his lap.

It was only when the door to their room opened and Geoff walked through the entrance did they let go of each other’s hands. But neither of them ever let go of that particular feeling that it had given them.

That should have been their sign that what they had was not what they could _be_. It should have been the indicator that when Ryan spoke a little too loudly and laughed a little bit more, he was trying to say something. It should have been the indicator that when Ray hung around Ryan and started using _his_ armchair in the corner of _his _room to nap in, he was trying to reach out further and further into a territory neither of them knew how to navigate. 

However, it was not an indication for either of them. It was a layer of friendship they had reached, but more importantly it was also the _limit._

That was the specific night that the two of them built unspoken walls, that started at hesitant smiles and ended with two hands intertwined, far too rough and calloused to hold on to anything more. 


End file.
